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<refentry id="systemd.generator">
<refentryinfo>
<title>systemd.generator</title>
<productname>systemd</productname>
</refentryinfo>
<refmeta>
<refentrytitle>systemd.generator</refentrytitle>
<manvolnum>7</manvolnum>
</refmeta>
<refnamediv>
<refname>systemd.generator</refname>
<refpurpose>systemd unit generators</refpurpose>
</refnamediv>
<refsynopsisdiv>
<cmdsynopsis>
<command index='false'>/path/to/generator</command>
<arg choice="plain"><replaceable>normal-dir</replaceable></arg>
<arg choice="plain"><replaceable>early-dir</replaceable></arg>
<arg choice="plain"><replaceable>late-dir</replaceable></arg>
</cmdsynopsis>
<para>
<literallayout><filename>/run/systemd/system-generators/*</filename>
<filename>/etc/systemd/system-generators/*</filename>
<filename>/usr/local/lib/systemd/system-generators/*</filename>
<filename>&systemgeneratordir;/*</filename></literallayout>
</para>
<para>
<literallayout><filename>/run/systemd/user-generators/*</filename>
<filename>/etc/systemd/user-generators/*</filename>
<filename>/usr/local/lib/systemd/user-generators/*</filename>
<filename>&usergeneratordir;/*</filename></literallayout>
</para>
</refsynopsisdiv>
<refsect1>
<title>Description</title>
<para>Generators are small executables that live in
<filename>&systemgeneratordir;/</filename> and other directories listed above.
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
will execute those binaries very early at bootup and at configuration reload time
— before unit files are loaded. Their main purpose is to convert configuration
that is not native into dynamically generated unit files.</para>
<para>Each generator is called with three directory paths that are to be used for
generator output. In these three directories, generators may dynamically generate
unit files (regular ones, instances, as well as templates), unit file
<filename>.d/</filename> drop-ins, and create symbolic links to unit files to add
additional dependencies, create aliases, or instantiate existing templates. Those
directories are included in the unit load path of
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
allowing generated configuration to extend or override existing
definitions.</para>
<para>Directory paths for generator output differ by priority:
<filename>…/generator.early</filename> has priority higher than the admin
configuration in <filename>/etc</filename>, while
<filename>…/generator</filename> has lower priority than
<filename>/etc</filename> but higher than vendor configuration in
<filename>/usr</filename>, and <filename>…/generator.late</filename> has priority
lower than all other configuration. See the next section and the discussion of
unit load paths and unit overriding in
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.unit</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>.
</para>
<para>Generators are loaded from a set of paths determined during
compilation, as listed above. System and user generators are loaded
from directories with names ending in
<filename>system-generators/</filename> and
<filename>user-generators/</filename>, respectively. Generators
found in directories listed earlier override the ones with the
same name in directories lower in the list. A symlink to
<filename>/dev/null</filename> or an empty file can be used to
mask a generator, thereby preventing it from running. Please note
that the order of the two directories with the highest priority is
reversed with respect to the unit load path, and generators in
<filename>/run</filename> overwrite those in
<filename>/etc</filename>.</para>
<para>After installing new generators or updating the
configuration, <command>systemctl daemon-reload</command> may be
executed. This will delete the previous configuration created by
generators, re-run all generators, and cause
<command>systemd</command> to reload units from disk. See
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemctl</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
for more information.
</para>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>
<title>Output directories</title>
<para>Generators are invoked with three arguments: paths to directories where
generators can place their generated unit files or symlinks. By default those
paths are runtime directories that are included in the search path of
<command>systemd</command>, but a generator may be called with different paths
for debugging purposes.</para>
<orderedlist>
<listitem>
<para><parameter>normal-dir</parameter></para>
<para>In normal use this is <filename>/run/systemd/generator</filename> in
case of the system generators and
<filename>$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/generator</filename> in case of the user
generators. Unit files placed in this directory take precedence over vendor
unit configuration but not over native user/administrator unit configuration.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para><parameter>early-dir</parameter></para>
<para>In normal use this is <filename>/run/systemd/generator.early</filename>
in case of the system generators and
<filename>$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/generator.early</filename> in case of the user
generators. Unit files placed in this directory override unit files in
<filename>/usr</filename>, <filename>/run</filename> and
<filename>/etc</filename>. This means that unit files placed in this
directory take precedence over all normal configuration, both vendor and
user/administrator.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para><parameter>late-dir</parameter></para>
<para>In normal use this is <filename>/run/systemd/generator.late</filename>
in case of the system generators and
<filename>$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/generator.late</filename> in case of the user
generators. This directory may be used to extend the unit file tree without
overriding any other unit files. Any native configuration files supplied by
the vendor or user/administrator take precedence.</para>
</listitem>
</orderedlist>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>
<title>Notes about writing generators</title>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>All generators are executed in parallel. That means all executables are
started at the very same time and need to be able to cope with this
parallelism.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Generators are run very early at boot and cannot rely on any external
services. They may not talk to any other process. That includes simple things
such as logging to
<citerefentry project='man-pages'><refentrytitle>syslog</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
or <command>systemd</command> itself (this means: no
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemctl</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>)!
Non-essential file systems like <filename>/var</filename> and
<filename>/home</filename> are mounted after generators have run. Generators
can however rely on the most basic kernel functionality to be available,
including a mounted <filename>/sys</filename>, <filename>/proc</filename>,
<filename>/dev</filename>, <filename>/usr</filename>.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Units written by generators are removed when the configuration is
reloaded. That means the lifetime of the generated units is closely bound to
the reload cycles of <command>systemd</command> itself.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Generators should only be used to generate unit files and symlinks to
them, not any other kind of configuration. Due to the lifecycle logic
mentioned above, generators are not a good fit to generate dynamic
configuration for other services. If you need to generate dynamic
configuration for other services, do so in normal services you order before
the service in question.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Since
<citerefentry project='man-pages'><refentrytitle>syslog</refentrytitle><manvolnum>3</manvolnum></citerefentry>
is not available (see above), log messages have to be written to
<filename>/dev/kmsg</filename> instead.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>The generator should always include its own name in a comment at the top of the generated file,
so that the user can easily figure out which component created or amended a particular unit.</para>
<para>The <varname>SourcePath=</varname> directive should be used in generated files to specify the
source configuration file they are generated from. This makes things more easily understood by the
user and also has the benefit that systemd can warn the user about configuration files that changed
on disk but have not been read yet by systemd. The <varname>SourcePath=</varname> value does not have
to be a file in a physical filesystem. For example, in the common case of the generator looking at
the kernel command line, <option>SourcePath=/proc/cmdline</option> should be used.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Generators may write out dynamic unit files or just hook unit files
into other units with the usual <filename>.wants/</filename> or
<filename>.requires/</filename> symlinks. Often, it is nicer to simply
instantiate a template unit file from <filename>/usr</filename> with a
generator instead of writing out entirely dynamic unit files. Of course, this
works only if a single parameter is to be used.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>If you are careful, you can implement generators in shell scripts. We
do recommend C code however, since generators are executed synchronously and
hence delay the entire boot if they are slow.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Regarding overriding semantics: there are two rules we try to follow
when thinking about the overriding semantics:</para>
<orderedlist numeration="lowerroman">
<listitem>
<para>User configuration should override vendor configuration. This
(mostly) means that stuff from <filename>/etc</filename> should override
stuff from <filename>/usr</filename>.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Native configuration should override non-native configuration. This
(mostly) means that stuff you generate should never override native unit
files for the same purpose.</para>
</listitem>
</orderedlist>
<para>Of these two rules the first rule is probably the more important one
and breaks the second one sometimes. Hence, when deciding whether to use
argv[1], argv[2], or argv[3], your default choice should probably be
argv[1].</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Instead of heading off now and writing all kind of generators for
legacy configuration file formats, please think twice! It is often a better
idea to just deprecate old stuff instead of keeping it artificially alive.
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>
<title>Examples</title>
<example>
<title>systemd-fstab-generator</title>
<para><citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-fstab-generator</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>
converts <filename>/etc/fstab</filename> into native mount units. It uses
argv[1] as location to place the generated unit files in order to allow the
user to override <filename>/etc/fstab</filename> with their own native unit
files, but also to ensure that <filename>/etc/fstab</filename> overrides any
vendor default from <filename>/usr</filename>.</para>
<para>After editing <filename>/etc/fstab</filename>, the user should invoke
<command>systemctl daemon-reload</command>. This will re-run all generators and
cause <command>systemd</command> to reload units from disk. To actually mount
new directories added to <filename>fstab</filename>, <command>systemctl start
<replaceable>/path/to/mountpoint</replaceable></command> or <command>systemctl
start local-fs.target</command> may be used.</para>
</example>
<example>
<title>systemd-system-update-generator</title>
<para><citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-system-update-generator</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>
temporarily redirects <filename>default.target</filename> to
<filename>system-update.target</filename>, if a system update is
scheduled. Since this needs to override the default user configuration for
<filename>default.target</filename>, it uses argv[2]. For details about this
logic, see
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.offline-updates</refentrytitle><manvolnum>7</manvolnum></citerefentry>.
</para>
</example>
<example>
<title>Debugging a generator</title>
<programlisting>dir=$(mktemp -d)
SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL=debug &systemgeneratordir;/systemd-fstab-generator \
"$dir" "$dir" "$dir"
find $dir</programlisting>
</example>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>
<title>See also</title>
<para>
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-cryptsetup-generator</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-debug-generator</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-fstab-generator</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
<citerefentry project='man-pages'><refentrytitle>fstab</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-getty-generator</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-gpt-auto-generator</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-hibernate-resume-generator</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-rc-local-generator</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-system-update-generator</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd-sysv-generator</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.unit</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemctl</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>,
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>systemd.environment-generator</refentrytitle><manvolnum>7</manvolnum></citerefentry>
</para>
</refsect1>
</refentry>